Nigel Leask

The Shadow Line’: James Currie’s ‘Life of Burns’ and British Romanticism

Dr James Currie’s 1800 edition of the Works of Robert Burns, particularly the 335-page critical biography of the poet which makes up the first of its four volumes, was enormously influential in its time, going through five editions and about 10,000 copies by 1805, and reaching an 8th edition by 1820.1 By comparison, the combined sales of the three editions of Lyrical Ballads 1798–1802 amounted to little more than 2000 copies.2 Nevertheless, Currie’s Burns has long been vilified by Burns scholars and unjustly marginalized in Romantic studies. In this chapter I propose to revisit Currie’s biography of the poet, and particularly the preliminary ‘Observations on the Scottish Peasantry’, in a bid to reclaim its importance as a discursive ‘debatable land’ between the Scottish Enlightenment and that programmatic manifesto of British Romanticism, the 1800 Preface to Lyrical Ballads.

Fingalian topographies: Ossian and the Highland Tour 1760-1805

If Ossian validated the Highland landscape for eighteenth-century tourists, the landscape, in turn, seemed to authenticate poems whose authenticity never ceased to be doubted; but text and topography alike ran the risk of dissolving into insubstantiality. Many tourists cited ‘local tradition’ in order to embroider existing (or to invent new) Fingalian place-names. Ranging over a wide variety of eighteenth-century travel-writers, this article casts new light on the relations between Ossian, travel-writing and Highland topography. It concludes by discussing the ‘fieldwork’ tradition of Ossianic tourism after 1800, which sought out local tradition bearers, rather than attempting to authenticate Macphersons ‘translations’.

Was Burns a Labouring-Class Poet?

Writing in the Edinburgh Review in 1809, Francis Jeffrey reflected on the widespread contemporary view of Robert Burns as a ‘peasant poet’; ‘certainly by far the greatest of our poetical prodigies — from Stephen Duck down to Thomas Dermody. They are forgotten already; or only remembered for derision. But the name of Burns, if we are not mis¬taken, has not yet “gathered all its fame”.’ Jeffrey canvassed the case for locating Burns in the company of Wiltshire-born Stephen Duck (1705?–1756), tragic paradigm of all eighteenth-century labouring-class poets, and the more contemporary Irish poet-prodigy Thomas Dermody (1772–1802), but dismissed the comparison as deeply misleading: ‘He will never be rightly estimated as a poet, till that vulgar wonder be entirely repressed which was raised on his having been a ploughman’ (Jeffrey, 1809, p. 249).

Burns, Wordsworth and the Politics of Vernacular Poetry

In his poem ‘At the Grave of Burns’, written during his Scottish tour of 1803, Wordsworth made no secret of his indebtedness to Robert Burns, ‘whose light I hailed when first it shone,/And showed my youth/How verse may build a princely throne/On humble truth’1. Paying homage by adopting Burns’ trademark ‘Standard Habbie’ stanza2, Wordsworth evoked the Lakeland peaks of Criffel and Skiddaw visible from both Grasmere and Burns’ Dumfriesshire farm at Ellisland, musing that; ‘Neighbours we were, and loving friends/We might have been’.3 Despite this homage to Burns, Wordsworth believed, on the basis of his reading of James Currie’s ‘Life’ prefixed to his 1800 edition of Burns’ poems, that the poet had died an indigent alcoholic at Dumfries seven years before in 1796.4 This explains Dorothy Wordsworth’s comment, in her Recollections of the 1803 Tour, ‘there is no thought surviving in connexion with Burns’ daily life that is not heart-depressing’. Reports of the poverty of Burns’ widow Jean and his surviving sons ‘filled us with melancholy concern, which had a kind of connexion with ourselves’, she added.5 Dorothy registers familial anxiety concerning Burns’ role as poetic alter ego for her brother Wordsworth, despite the fact that of the two poets’ ‘neighbourliness’, and their possible friendship, thwarted by Burns’ untimely death.

Sir William Jones: Selected Poetical and Prose Works@@@Sir William Jones

This edition provides a representative selection of the key works of Sir William Jones (1746-94), one of the foremost Orientalists and intellectual pioneers of his generation. The range of his interests and accomplishments was diverse and this volume provides convenient and reliable points of access to Joness remarkable work which extended to 13 volumes in the collected edition of 1807 (recently reprinted by Curzon/New York University). This book represents an annotated critical edition of important poetical, cultural and political works produced both in Britain and India, and care has been taken to establish authoritative texts and contexts for each item. The texts are arranged in chronological order of composition, and each has a headnote on its general significance, together with substantial footnotes elucidating its particular obscurities and a discussion of its meaning and occasion. Jones is of critical interest for two major reasons: his historical significance for Orientalism and Romanticism; and the specific climate of current debate over issues of race, colonialism, and nationhood. With the advent of cultural pluralism, and from the modern perspective of comparative literature, Jones is being seen as a crucial integrator, synthesiser and transmitter of Eastern culture, and one who avoided the gross ethnocentricity of most of his contemporaries. There is also a renewed interest in Orientalism and colonial discourse following the publication of works by Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha and others which may involve critical reassessment of Sir William Jones.